The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and Newspapers In Education present: Week 1 Exploring Asia: Asian Cities — Growth and Change

URBAN AND MEGACITY ASIA substantiated by Anu Taranath’s cautionary By Dr. Anand A. Yang tale of the people left behind in a seemingly Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor, Director, South Asia Center; “shining” Bangalore. Co-Director, Global Asia Institute, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies,University of Washington. Urban development has also transformed the physical environment of most cities in other Editor’s note: This article is the first of five featuring pieces by Dr. Nathaniel Trumbull, Dr. Anu Taranath, Dr. H. Hazel Hahn ways. Suburbanization has greatly extended and Dr. Kam Wing Chan. their urban limits, encompassing, in Delhi’s case, its neighboring rural areas. Spatial The Delhi of my childhood was a city of about a million expansion, however, has not eased such and a half inhabitants. Over the last 50 years, it has problems associated with massive urbanization been transformed by the rapid urbanization sweeping as congestion, pollution, safety and health across Asia. Almost four million by 1971, its population issues, as well as traffic gridlock. Old Delhi, multiplied to more than 12 million in 2001 and more interestingly, has seen a revival of the rickshaw Japan, Tokyo, Shinjuku, Tokyo Metropolitan City Hall in the center, aerial view than 16 million in 2011. The current estimate of more trade, which once dominated Hanoi, as Hazel than 20 million ranks it among one of the 20-some Hahn’s piece on colonial Vietnam illustrates. megacities in the world, with a metropolitan area of more than 10 million people. Chinese cities—Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, to Seoul, too, acquired a large populace early on. At name three—have similarly experienced unprecedented the end of the 1930s, it already housed one million; As with most Asian cities, Delhi’s burgeoning growth in recent decades. In the early 1980s, Beijing by 1990 its denizens totaled 10 million, or roughly population is partly due to migration. People converged was home to nine million; today it has more than 20 25 percent of South Korea’s overall population. The on it in the late 20th century and have continued to do million, 12 million of whom reside in its metropolitan Seoul metropolitan area, a much larger territory, now so in waves of several hundred thousand per annum area. In the last three decades, its numbers have claims more than 23 million. However, both Tokyo and in recent years. The city is a destination because it doubled. Shanghai, too, has surpassed 20 million; its Seoul—their core and not larger metropolitan areas— promises employment and higher wages than in the booming populace the product of double-digit growth have been losing numbers in recent years because of hinterland. As an economic, political, social, cultural and almost every year since the early 1990s. And during outmigration and declining natural growth stemming transportation hub, it also attracts all kinds of people, that same period, Guangzhou shot up from fewer from low fertility rates and an aging population. not just the poor from the countryside. than 3 million in 1980 to almost 10 million by 2000; it currently stands at 16 million. As Kam Wing Chan’s Growth—but without the shrinkage—also characterizes In addition, as India’s capital city—and the political article highlights, the growth of China’s large cities is the megacities of Southeast Asia. As the political and center of previous regimes—it has always drawn the part of an epic rural-urban shift that its government is social center of Indonesia, as well as its economic, attention of rulers intent on leaving their architectural attempting to manage through social engineering. commercial and transportation hub, the capital city imprints on its built environment. As Nathaniel of Jakarta is home to almost 10 million inhabitants— Trumbull’s article on Ashgabat and Astana in Central Asia’s other megacities—of which the region now close to 28 million if the count includes its greater Asia reveals, the public spaces of capital cities are often has the most in the world—narrate much the same metropolitan area. Similarly, Manila, the capital of the the “playgrounds” of leaders. story of staggering population increases and urban Philippines, has fewer than 2 million inhabitants but development. Consider, for example, Tokyo, the world’s almost 25 million in the greater metropolitan area. Both Cities—as Delhi exemplifies—invariably pay a high price largest megacity. More than a million strong by the mid- cities, furthermore, are living examples of the benefits for rapid urbanization. Familiar are their struggles with 18th century, it counted more than three million by the and burdens of breakneck urban development. issues relating to housing, sanitation, power, water, early 20th century, six million plus by the mid-1930s and health, pollution and transportation, especially as they 10 million by the 1960s. Tokyo proper has a little over No doubt, rapid economic growth in Asia will continue impact the poor. So are their slums and rising rates 13 million today. Greater Tokyo is closer to 35 million, to swell its roster of megacities. So will its secondary of urban poverty. Policymakers nevertheless continue or 25 percent of the country’s inhabitants, more people cities and towns where urbanization is profoundly to dream of cities as engines of economic growth than the population of such countries as Afghanistan, reshaping the lives of even larger cohorts of people that can pull people out of poverty, an optimism not Nepal, Malaysia, Taiwan and Sri Lanka. across the region.

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